The Wild Hunt
by Hazgarn
Summary: There are nights when even the bravest should beware to travel, and creatures that hunt on the other side of darkness. Preseries, Dean centric.


_Lodi, California_

_October 31st, 2002_

The moon was in its last throws, a slim crescent hanging in the sky that gave just enough weak light to justify its efforts. The blackness flanking the road was almost unrelieved except by the few stars managing to escape the clouds. Though an occasional glint rose from the surrounding countryside evidencing the warm, lit homes that were hidden, the crushing darkness these lights sheltered against held authority.

Dean's view was shrunken, his gaze bound to the road revealed by the Impala's lights as it rushed through the night. An old cassette ground around inside the stereo, the music of Deep Purple bruising out from the car's speakers to keep him company as he drove. Somehow, John slept.

It could have been any road as far as Dean was concerned. He and his father had traveled down plenty of them. The most recent leg of their wanderings had concerned an occult book dealer in San Francisco. No doubt the man would be horrified to know the costly volume the hunter had purchased now slid around inside their weapons cache. Now hey rode Route 106 toward Lodi, a precariously narrow strip of asphalt topping a steep levee protecting the surrounding farmland from flood.

Wine country wasn't generally ghost country, but heading east you came upon the rugged skirts of the Sierra-Nevada range, whose hills were seeded with as many tragedies as they were with old shafts and quarries to hide them in. They were headed that way now, towards Jackson where back in the twenties the Argonaut mine had been host to one of the worst mining disaster in the country, claiming the lives of almost fifty men. It was now a historical site. More than its share of misfortune seemed to have clung to the place before and since, enough in relation to its grim history to merit a look, just in case.

Dean didn't notice when it rolled over into midnight. Of more concern at that exact moment was the sound of the radio going dead, replaced by a neutral hiss. He popped the cassette in and out of the deck but got nothing better out of it. Finally he turned it off.

His father was still asleep in the seat beside him. The lack of music seemed to trouble him no more than the music itself had, though it was amazing the abrupt change hadn't brought some kind of reaction. John Winchester could never be called a light sleeper. Dean shook his head. He couldn't remember seeing him sleep so peacefully.

Dean definitely didn't see the fog come in.

Between one exhausted eye blink and the next it was just there, rushing in a near solid wall over the Impala and hiding the road entirely from his view. Dean slowed quickly and turned the car off to the side. He made his way blindly, using the feel of the gritty roadside beneath his wheels to tell him how close he was to plunging off the narrow levee. Water on either side...or was it farmland? Dean couldn't remember. He didn't have to, though, as he brought the vehicle to a halt and tried to think.

His heart beat heavily. It was a cinch this wasn't a normal fog. Not on this night. Dean knew better than that. His father didn't even stir next to him. He took a few deep breaths, looking at the clock. Midnight. All Hallows Eve. Something was wrong.

His gaze scanned the view offered outside the Impala's windows, but at all sides his eyes were met by uncompromising wall of grey-white. Beside him, John had yet to stir. Despite his own mounting anxiety, despite the fog-thick feeling of utter wrongness... He could practically taste it on his tongue. His father was dead asleep. There was a painless, lax quality to his features, as though he slept the sleep and dreamt the dreams of the man he'd been over twenty years before. Dean leaned on the horn. _Hard_. He didn't stir.

Something was _definitely_ wrong.

He felt them before he heard them at all. A thunderous rumble that at first he thought was his heartbeat. Panic not being in his nature, he then thought it was an earthquake. Or else he'd parked too close to the edge of the levee, and the ground underneath was starting to give. The keys jingled in the ignition as the ground shook. Outside the windows, the fog was as featureless as ever. Fingering the gun holstered at the small of his back, Dean came to a decision.

Thick tendrils of grey swirled inward as he slowly opened the door. It swung open, and all sound was devoured by the thundering noise as it approached. Through the blinding veil of fog he couldn't see the ground beneath his feet. He couldn't hear his own tread, though he felt the grinding of sand and soil beneath his boots. He held still, held his breath and tried to see beyond the solid wall of mists. As he did, for a moment he almost felt he floated, lost in all that whiteness.

The noise was so loud now, echoing across whatever distance and against whatever unknown landscape was hidden beneath the shifting fog. Dean couldn't tell the direction and kept his back to the car. His world narrowed. The farthest he could see was the gun drawn and leveled in front of him. He waited, though not patiently.

After what subjectively felt like an eternity he saw them. They were almost on top of him when they did. Tearing down the road in a thick column, they parting the fog like the fin of a shark: Riders and beasts, at least two dozen bearing down. Rattling, clattering, the host slammed into a halt alongside the Impala, and the wind of their momentum drove the fog into a swirling storm of troubled mists.

Their steeds were not horses. Though they were at least as large they were more lightly built, midnight black, and horned like goats with eyes that blazed with a white fire. Their breaths circulated thickly in the fog. They were fierce and fought their riders, cleft hooves conjuring white sparks from the gritty pavement beneath them when they struck. Large dogs ran alongside, chained to their master's wills by great collars of heavy metal, bands and chains of bronze glinting in the moonlight. Lolling red tongues beat their breath in opaque streaks of white that danced among the mists.

And at the head a dark figure loomed, a massive shadow that dwarfed all lesser shadows in his wake.

If the lead rider was not clad in pure black, then the thin moonlight did a masterful job at hiding that fact. Face hidden by a dark helmet, he was crowned with three sets of horns. Two curled like a ram's at the sides of his head, two were spears coming forward from his brow before curving backwards again, and two from the top of his head, slanting backward to spread out on either side.

The figure reeled round, steering its bucking mount away from the head of the column. The attendant shades around him parted. The fiercest of the hounds, made restless by the stop ceased nipping and worrying the heels of their master's ride and lay, whining, as his shadow crossed them. Finally it stopped before him.

Dean still held the gun before him. He had a moment to think, but only a moment. His arms lifted, leveling the barrel in front of him in an aim for the creature's heart. He had a moment to wonder.

_Did I load iron or silver today?_ And he pulled the trigger.

The soft 'chnk' of the pin hitting home was the loudest sound he could ever remember hearing. Loud, because of the noise that failed to follow. No flash, no smoke, no fire. No earth-shattering kaboom. The semiautomatic pistol sat cold in his hands moonlight glinting off it's silver casing as the bullet ejected, unfired.

"Shit." His own breath misted, mingling with the clinging fog.

Though its eyes were shrouded in shadow, Dean could feel the figure's gaze look into him. It was as though a curtain was parted, and whatever it was this creature saw, Dean could only know that it was the harshest truth of his soul.

The creature held up its gauntleted hand. There was a stir. From amid the party of wraithlike riders stepped a pale figure. Clad in white and pale as a whisper. Paler than most ghosts Dean had seen, which number was far more than his share. In fact, thinking about it, he was almost certain that was exactly what this new figure was.

With each step, it almost seemed to waver, moving through the fog with ginger care, as though a passing breeze might break it. Though no breeze stirred the fog, something seemed to suck and claw at the clothing of the being—a young boy, Dean saw, maybe twelve, fifteen—as though it was caught in a storm. His clothes seemed ragged and tattered, though the agonizing slowness of his step gave Dean the time to see this wasn't so. Merely the edges of what the spirit wore were fading, ceasing, bleeding into the fog.

For all this being's fragile appearance, it carried a heavy burden. Cradled in outstretched arms it bore a thick collar of spiked bronze, chain snaking out behind it to scrape against the asphalt with a subtle hiss. The ghost reached the tall rider, whose arm was still held high. Mirroring its dark master's gaze, it turned toward Dean, and with a push of its spectral arms, held forth the collar.

Both stared at Dean. The riders stared at Dean. The mist hung heavy and wet in the air against the silent tableau, silence broken only by the sound of his heart as he dared stare back. He wetted his lips, allowing his grip on the gun to fall. The gun itself clattered to the ground as his hand reached his side, tugged by gravity and motion from his numb fingers.

He was being offered a choice. He would run with the hunt or ahead of it as its prey.

It was so swift in his mind that Dean could later argue he'd been given no choice at all. Could, but wouldn't. It _was_ a choice. And one that would shame him secretly until the day he died. Perhaps longer.

Dean knelt. He kept his head up, staring into the cloaked countenance of the hunt's lord. He knelt while pale hands clasped the collar around his throat. For his part, the black rider inclined its head, posture expressing its satisfaction. The weight of the metal was great, but Dean kept his stare into the darkness of the creature's helm. This only seemed to please it more.

The ghostly page raised the chain, and the dark figure took it, spike-armored hand passing through the space where the phantom stood. The spirit's form wavered and billowed out, fading and falling apart into the swirling fog. The rider's grasp on the chain rung like a dull bell in Dean's ears as it was wrapped tightly round in its armored grasp. The sound vibrated, riding up the length of the chain in a tremor that Dean felt in his bones.

There isn't far to fall from kneeling. Dean managed to catch himself with a hand as he dropped beneath the collar's sudden weight. He was vaguely aware of one of the spikes that decked it as it dug into his shoulder. His fingers bit into the gravely soil that sided the levee road. He felt his back arch as cold lanced through him. The bronze that held his neck seemed to burn with it. And there was a sound he knew wasn't him, knew couldn't be from _him_... But it was.

Then all of Dean's shame and doubt were swallowed by cold and darkness. And there was only the hunt.

They tore through the night like a storm, and the near-winter wind chased them, envious and screaming, ripping the leaves from the trees. They ate up the ground with impossible strides. The hooves of the beasts were thunder and lightning both, and the mist preceded them everywhere.

There was plenty of prey to be had this night of all nights.

They rode along trails that lead through walls, and through the air, along the river, on its banks or its surface, sometimes under it. They hit upon the ghost of a murderer haunting the graves of his victims. The hunt harried him over miles. He was chased back to the cemetery where he'd been buried, caught and cornered, and on his very grave Dean tore the killer's soul apart with his teeth.

And the night stretched on. They flushed a rusalka from the bottom of the river, and her body was broken under cold hooves. Lighter, more harmless spirits fled before them, wailing in the darkness at a fear beyond death. They chased ghosts both innocent and damned, animals, men, winged women and beasts with human faces. A living child was snatched up who had been lost to his mother, and now would be forever. The cold night promised blood, and anything that crossed their path was forfeit. The night stretched on…

Dean woke so abruptly that it could have been a dream. So abruptly that he almost slugged his father. John had a loose grip on his arm and was shaking him awake.

"Dean, you look like hell. You drive all night?"

Even Hell was a tame word for what Dean felt like. Lifeless autumn sunlight stabbed his eyes, even filtered in through clouds and through windows fogged by their breath. He clenched his eyes shut, resting his head against the wheel of the Impala. It felt cool under his skin where his skin felt fevered. There was a raw feeling inside. Like he'd been cored out, scooped out, and stuffed back together wrong. Every part of him throbbed with a dull ache, every joint creaked softly with the slightest shift of his body, the exertion over countless darkened miles taking its toll.

"Move over, I'll get us the rest of the way." John gave him a nudge. "Scoot."

Dean uttered a low growl, but one very much his own as he fumbled for the latch on the door. It swung open, and the cold breeze that entered the car seemed to run right through his bones. With a small noise, he dragged himself over the seat into the back instead. A glimpse of himself in the rear-view showed a face made pale and hollow—almost inhuman—by exhaustion.

He lay on the bench seat, staring at the car's ceiling. His breathing was painful and ragged, exhausted and loud in his ears. He heard the door slam as his father slid into the driver's seat, felt the engine rumble to life, vibrating the car. His eyes fluttered shut at the soothing sound and he curled himself up in a tense ball against the back of the seat.

As he shifted, he knocked something loose. A cold weight chilled his chest and neck that send him bolting back to the waking world. He reached a slow hand under his shirt, fingers feeling out the source of that weight.

What he brought before his eyes glinted dully in the dim morning sunlight. A familiar glint and an almost familiar visage. The image of a horn-crowned head cast in bronze hung around his neck on a thick cord. It did not resemble the figure he'd seen in the night, but the metal was heavy in his hand and froze the flesh of his fingers. He knew who it was all the same.

What it meant was another matter entirely.

The car hummed along, and in the front seat Dean could hear his father tuning the stations on the radio. His thoughts were their own static. He clutched the ornament in his fist, hiding it from sight. Crescents of grime stared back at him from underneath his fingernails. He remembered the grit of sand under dark paws, the close scent of the road. His head fell back onto the leather seat with a soft sound, and his eyes shut once more.

Every man Dean had encountered that shared the life his family lead carried a burden on their shoulders. A mission. A reason, be it vengeance, justice, hate, or God, that set them on the lonely and dangerous path in pursuit of the monsters that populated the darkness. That was why Sam had left them. There had simply been nothing to steer him on that course his brother and father held.

But for Dean, the hunt had always been reason enough. And with that thought in mind as he dropped into a worn and dreamless sleep, he thought he understood a little.

Dean never told his father about what happened that night. He kept the amulet. And if John Winchester ever questioned its presence, or suspected that something had befallen, he let sleeping dogs lie.


End file.
